Fields' Guide to Abduction, - [famous ebook reader TXT] 📗
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“Oh?” It was coming. I waited.
“Chariss Carlton.” His lips stopped flirting with a smile and actually curved.
I returned my gaze to my book.
“You’ve heard of her?”
“My mother.”
“No!”
“Yes.” Here they came—the laundry list of movies including his favorites and the invasive questions. I checked my page number and prepared a yawn.
“Is she here with you?” Not one of the questions I’d been expecting.
I looked up from page fifty-six. “Chariss is shooting a movie in Paris.”
“You are here alone?” He stepped closer—too close.
I pressed my back against the cushion and tightened my grip on the book.
An explosion of laughter had us both turning our gazes toward his friends.
One of the men (complete with belly, mustache, and tattoos—the trifecta—plus an ugly scar across his chest) had pulled off one of the women’s bikini tops. He held it just out of her reach.
Granted, her reach wasn’t far—not with her arms crossed over her chest.
Her gaze traveled from her missing top to Javier and me. She glared at us as if we were somehow to blame.
Whoever she was, she could give Chariss a run for the most-beautiful-woman-in-the-world title. Dark hair floated down her back, her face was a perfect oval face, and her skin looked like bronze velvet.
With an explosive guffaw, the man with her top tossed the few bits of fabric and string into the pool.
The woman turned her gaze to the water then stood. She stalked to the edge of the pool and dove in. A perfect, elegant dive.
A moment later she emerged from the water fully covered. Droplets from her body showered the pool deck as she made her way to the man with the belly and the mustache and the tattoos and the ugly scar.
She spoke. Softly. I didn’t hear her actual words but the laughter and the smiles on the faces of the people around her disappeared. Wiped away as if they had never been.
The man who’d swiped her top flushed a deep red.
She walked toward Javier and me with her head held high and her shoulders straight.
Her eyes narrowed as she neared us—eyes the exact shade of honey amber.
Javier held up a hand but she brushed past him as if he wasn’t there.
He watched her walk away. “Marta.”
Her step hitched—barely—but she didn’t stop.
I had enough drama without borrowing theirs. I raised my book.
By the time he shifted his gaze back to me, my eyes were glued to page fifty-six. Please, just walk away. Please.
“Perhaps you’d like to join—”
My phone rang. Gypsy from Fleetwood Mac.
Thank God.
“I’m sorry. A friend is calling.” Mia had a serious girl-crush on Stevie Nicks—thus the ringtone. I held the phone to my ear. “Hello.”
“Where are you?” One day, Mia and her you-are-so-busted tone would strike fear in her children’s hearts. Already I felt guilty, and I hadn’t done anything.
“I’m in Cabo.” And Javier was listening,
“So I hear. James called and wanted to know when my flight was leaving. He’s worried about you being alone.”
“I want to be alone.” Hint, hint, Javier.
“Are you sure? I could fly down there.”
“Positive. I just need time.” I glanced at Javier. “Alone.”
“I know. But why Mexico?”
“Why not?”
“Because, usually when you have a problem, you go to the ranch.” Mia knew me too well. “Plus it’s dangerous.”
“Not at the resorts.” I glanced up at Javier, who’d made no move to leave, conjured up an apologetic grimace, and pointed at the phone in my hand. “I may be awhile.”
“Perhaps you’d like to join us at the party tonight?”
Him and his oh-so charming friends? “Party?”
“The grand opening celebration.”
That party. The one I’d agreed to attend in exchange for a villa. “I am going. Perhaps I’ll see you there.”
A flash of annoyance darkened his features but he nodded and sauntered back to his friends.
“Who were you talking to?” Mia demanded.
“No one.”
“No one has a voice?”
“A man was hitting on me,” I whispered. “He left.”
“Then why are you whispering?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“What are you doing down there, Poppy?”
“Like I said, I just need time away.” Then, because I didn’t know how to quit when I was ahead, I added, “There are no memories here.”
“Did they give you a villa?”
“Yes.” A splash of uh-oh washed down my spine. “Why?”
“How many bedrooms?”
Uh-oh.
“I’m coming down there.”
“You don’t have to, Mia.”
“I wanna come!.”
“I want to be alone.”
“Then you can be alone with me.”
“Mia.” Arguing with her was like arguing with a brick wall, but harder and less rewarding.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Mia—” exasperation curled my fingers.
“I’m coming. You can thank me later.” With that, she hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand.
Laughter had resumed down the length of the pool deck and I glanced toward the group. They’d returned to their tequila shots. Except for Javier and the man who’d stolen Marta’s top—they were both staring at me.
Their gazes managed to be both hot and cold
I shivered and threw my things in my pool bag. I’d be safer away from bellies, mustaches, tattoos, scars, and tequila shots.
I sat at an umbrella-covered table on a sun-dappled patio with an ocean view and ate grilled shrimp and jicama salad from a gold-rimmed plate. A starched linen napkin covered my lap. A crystal goblet filled with mineral water waited for my lips.
Turquoise waves lapped at a beach marked by the three bands of sand—dry, drying, and wet. Tiny white puffs, almost too perfect to be clouds, scudded across an impossibly blue sky. The sound of the water mixed with the swish of wind through palm fronds, the call of birds I couldn’t hope to identify, and the subdued chatter of those at tables near mine.
There was not one thing to remind me of Jake. I thought of him anyway. Tears blurred my vision.
I shook my head, dried my eyes, and lifted a silver fork to my lips.
“You’re Poppy Fields.” An attractive woman with hair as white as the clouds planted herself in front of me.
“Yes.”
“I once worked with your mother.” She wore vibrant red lipstick which enhanced the smile she directed at me. “I’m Irene Vargas.” An expectant expression settled on her tanned face—almost as if she hoped I’d remember her.
I didn’t. “I’m sorry but—”
She waved away my apology and smiled as if we were best-friends unexpectedly reunited after long absence. “You’re too young to remember. I played the housekeeper in her very first series.”
The series that tore our little family in half. The series that had mattered to Chariss more than her daughter. I’d not caught many episodes.
“How is your mother?”
“She’s shooting a movie in Paris.” Chariss working was Chariss happy. Chariss between roles fretted and meddled and worried about all the things I wasn’t doing with my life. She began every sentence with, “When I was your age, I’d—” I could fill in the blank with won an Oscar, won an Emmy, or made enough money to last a lifetime.
Irene stared at me as if she expected me to say more.
I didn’t. I couldn’t. Chariss had never once mentioned Irene Vargas.
A few seconds passed by and Irene’s smile faltered. “Well, please give her my regards.”
“I will.” I could be nicer. I should be nicer. “Are you still working?”
The smile returned to full voltage. “Me? I do a bit of television from time to time. But my granddaughter—she’s the real star. Here in Mexico.”
“You must be very proud.”
Irene positively glowed with pride. “I am.” The full-voltage smile
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